
Rnrfr T Co S q < 

Copyright^ . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSHV 



The greatest thing 
ever known ** 




BY 

/ 
RALPH WALDO TRINE 

AUTHOR OF 

M In Tune with the Infinite," " What all the 
World's a-Seeking" 



oe 



The moment we fully and vitally realize 
WHO AND WHAT WE ARE, we then begin 
to build our own world even as God 
builds His. 



<M 



New York : 46 East Fourteenth Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

Boston: 100 Purchase Street 



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^686 

Copyright 1898 
By Ralph Waldo Trine 




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CONTENTS. 



I. The Greatest Thing Ever Known . . 

II. Divine Energies in Every-dat Life . . 

III. The Master's Great but Lost Gift . . 

IV. The Philosopher's Ripest Life Thought 
V. Sustained in Peace and Safety Forever 



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23 
29 
42 
51 



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THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 



I. 

The greatest thing ever known — What is it ? Full 
surely the answer must be one that is absolutely uni- 
versal, both in its nature and in the possibilities of its 
application. It must be one that can be accepted wholly 
and unreservedly, not only by a single individual, but 
even by bodies of individuals, be they the originators of 
any particular school of Ethics, the followers of any par- 
ticular system of Philosophy, or even the adherents of 
any great system of Religion. It must be one so true in 
itself that it can be accepted by all men alike the world 
over. 

And again, it must be an answer that is true for no 
particular period of time, but equally true for all time — 
an answer that was true not only for yesterday, that is 
true for to-day, that may be true for to-morrow, but one 
equally true for yesterday, to-day, and forever. In lay- 
ing our foundation, therefore, it must be laid upon some- 
thing as true and as certain as Life itself, and as eternal 
as Everlasting Life. 

What is as true and as certain as Life itself ? Life, only 
Life. And what do we mean by this answer ? Let us 
give it for a moment our most careful consideration, for 
upon what we find here depends and rests all that is to 
follow. Let us start, then, with that in regard to which 



6 THE GEE ATE ST THING EVEB KNOWN. 

all can agree ; something taken not from mere tradition, 
from mere hearsay, but something that comes to us from 
no source other than our own interior consciousness, our 
own reason and insight. In other words, let us make 
our approach, not from the theological standpoint, but 
from that which is far more certain and satisfactory — 
the philosophical. 

Then, and then only, will we allow pure reason to be 
our guide, and then by having as the earnest desire of 
both mind and heart, truth, truth for its own sake, and 
then for the sake of its influence upon every-day life, we 
will thus allow pure reason to be illumined by the Light 
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In 
the degree that we open ourselves to and are true to this 
are we on sure and safe ground, for thus are we going 
directly to the source and the only source of all true 
revelation. In the degree, on the other hand, that we 
close ourselves or become untrue to this are we on 
uncertain and dangerous ground, and liable to find our- 
selves hopelessly floundering in the quagmire of theolog- 
ical traditions and speculations and doubts, of which the 
world has already seen so much. Pure reason, therefore, 
shall be our guide — pure reason illumined by the Inner 
Light. 

Again, then, What is Life ? Being is Life. . Life is 
Being. Being, therefore, is our starting-point, and indeed 
our very foundation itself. 

Each can form his own idea of being, so that in reality 
it needs no defining. By it we mean that self -existent 
principle of Life and all that attends it, without beginning 
and without end, the Power that animates all and so that 
is the Life of all. In short, we can scarcely define Being, 
if indeed it can be defined, without using the word Life, 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 7 

and indeed without identifying the two. Being and Life, 
then, are one and the same. 

It is Being that projects itself into ex-istence. Being, 
acting through its own intelligence, prompted by love, 
projected by will, goes out and takes form. We cannot 
say that it enters into form, for until it projects itself 
into ex-istence there is no form, but form comes by 
virtue of Being, the self -existent Principle of Life and 
Power, manifesting itself in ex-istence. So in a sense 
Life, which is one with Being, is the soul and form, of 
whatever nature the body. 

Only as Being projects itself into ex-istence are we able 
to know it. We can know the fact that Being is, but 
only as it manifests itself in form are, we able to know it 
itself. 

Being is one, not many. As Being is the source of all 
Life, there is, then, only one Life, and this Being is the 
Life of all. " The one Divine Being ; and this alone is 
the true Reality in all Existence, and so remains in all 
Eternity." And there is nothing real that is, or, indeed, 
that can be, outside of it. True, then, are the words of 
one of the most highly illumined philosophers of modern 
times — " Thus we have these two elements : Being, as 
it is essentially and in itself ; and Form, which is assumed 
by the former in consequence of Existence. But how 
have we expressed ourselves ? What is it that assumes 
a form ? Answer : Beings as it exists in itself, without 
any change whatever in its inward, Essential Nature. 
But what, then, is there in Existence ? Answer : Nothing 
else than the One Eternal and Unchangeable Being, 
besides which there can be nothing." 

This Being which is Infinite is in truth, then, the In- 
finite Being, and this Infinite Being is what we mean by 



8 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

God — each using the term that appeals most to himself. 
Literally, the I Am, as is signified by the name Jehovah, 
which is derived in the Hebrew from the word To Be. 
God, then, is the Infinite Being, the Infinite Spirit of Life 
which fills all in ex-istence with himself alone, so that all 
is He, since He is All. If God is all, then all must be 
He, and from this fact there is no escape, and no other 
conclusion can be arrived at which does not do violence 
to all rational thought. There are those — and to such 
these pages are not addressed, for so limited are they in 
comprehension, or so closed to. truth and hence so en- 
grossed in bigotry, that they either can or will see 
nothing that may be opposed to their present ideas — 
there are those who say that God is all, and immediately 
begin to fill up the universe with that which God is not. 

Again, there are those open to and eagerly seeking for 
the highest truth who say : But evil is not God, and 
how then can God be all, for surely there is such a thing 
as evil. Certainly evil is not God, nor has God anything 
to do with evil. Evil is simply the result of the tempo- 
rary perversion of the good, and as such must either 
cease or in time die at its own hands. As such, then, it 
has no essential reality, for that which has essential 
reality has neither beginning nor end. 

Man is the only one who has to do with evil, he alone 
is its author; man, who in his thought separates him- 
self from Divine Being, in whom alone true happiness 
and blessedness can be found. Eegarding the mere 
bodily existence as his real life, he tries to find pleasure 
and happiness entirely through these channels, and many 
times by violating the higher laws of his being, and thus 
what we term evil enters in. But though man has per- 
fect freedom in all his thoughts and acts, God will suffer 



THE GEE ATE 8T THING EVER KNOWN. 9 

no such violation. And so, from the pain and suffering 
that result from the violation of the higher laws of his 
being, he is pushed on in his thought and through this 
in his life to the Reality of his being, and finds that only 
in conscious union with God true pleasure and blessed- 
ness lie, as God surely intends. True, then, evil is not 
God, nor has God anything to do with evil; for man 
alone has to do with it, so long, and only so long, as he 
lives his life out of a conscious union with the life of 
God. 

Infinite Being, God, then, is the one and the only Life. 
You and I in our true selves are Life. It cannot be truly 
said that we have life, for we are Life ; Life that mani- 
fests itself in the form in ex-istence that we denominate 
by the term body. And as the Infinite Being, the Infinite 
Life, God, is the I Am, the life of all in ex-istence, then 
we indeed are parts of the Infinite Being, the Infinite 
Life, the I Am, the very God himself. And thus it is 
that your life and mine is one with the life of God. By 
this we do not mean the mere body, but the Real Self 
that takes to itself the form — body. It is utterly 
impossible that there be any real life that is not one 
with the life of God. And in this sense it is true that 
the life of man and the life of God are essentially and 
necessarily one and the same. In essence they are one 
and the same; they differ not in quality, for this it 
is impossible rationally even to conceive of. There 
is a difference — it is a difference simply in degree, 
not in essence or kind. It is only by reason of our 
own thought that our life is separate from the life of 
God, only by reason of our own thought that we live 
in this separation, if indeed we can use the term live 
where the full life is not consciously realized and 



10 TH$ GBEATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

enjoyed. Truly, then, " In Him we live and move and 
have our being." 

We never could have been, and never can be, other 
than Divine Being. And I fully agree with the thought 
expressed in a recent letter from Prof. Max Mtiller in 
which he says : " I cannot accept Athanasius when 
he says that we can become gods ; man cannot say, 
become God, because he is God ; what else could he be, 
if God is the only true and real being ? " 

How is it, then, I hear it asked, that man has the 
limitations that he has, that he is subject to fears 
and forebodings, that he is liable to sin and error, that 
he is the victim of disease and suffering ? There 
is but one reason. He is not living, except in rare 
cases here and there, in the conscious realization of 
his own true Being, and hence of his own true Self. 
We must in thought be conscious of who and what we 
are before the qualities and powers of our real being, 
and hence our real selves, actualize or even manifest 
themselves. Says one of the most highly illumined seers 
of modern times : " The True Life and its Blessedness 
consists in a union with the Unchangeable and Eternal ; 
but the Eternal can be apprehended only by Thought, and 
is in no other way approachable by us." 

Thought is the atmosphere, the element, in a sense 
the very substance, of the phase of Divine Being that we 
call human life. How much it is likewise that of other 
forms of Divine Being in ex-istence, as we see it in the 
various manifestations of life around us, we cannot be so 
fully certain of. But certain it is that through thought, 
and through thought alone, we are able to conceive of 
Divine Being as the Infinite Spirit and Essence of Life, and 
then to see clearly that it is the Life of our Life, and then 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 11 

to live in the realization of our oneness with it, and in this 
way allow the Divine Word to become incarnate in us by 
being thus fully and completely manifest in us, precisely 
as it became manifest and hence incarnate in the Christ 
Jesus, as we shall hereafter find. 

When Divine Being manifests itself in physical human 
form, its inward essential nature or reality changes not, 
for this from its very nature it is impossible for it in 
any way to do. It does, however, have to manifest itself 
through the agency of physical senses, and precisely for 
this reason is it that for a time our real inward Essential 
Nature and Life is concealed from us, but this again only 
by reason of our limited comprehension. 

When we are born into the world of Nature we see 
and cognize through and by means of the physical 
senses, and the natural physical world becomes to us 
for a time the real world. By and by, however, through 
these very senses we are able to conceive of the One and 
Eternal Source of Life as our real and therefore our only 
life, and then through them to hold ourselves in this 
living realization. Hence, first that which is natural 
and then that which is spiritual is necessarily as well as 
literally and philosophically true. Happy, however, is 
the man who dwells not long as the purely natural man, 
but is early transformed into the spiritual, and so in 
whom the Divine Word early becomes incarnate. 

Blessed state indeed, says the thoughtful and earnest 
seeker for the best things in life, and more to be prized 
than all else besides ; but if this state is really possible 
of realization, what can be said regarding the method of 
entering into it ? There is only one thing in all the 
wide universe that will enable you as well as all the 
world to do it effectually. " Be ye therefore trans- 



12 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

formed by the renewing of your minds." This is the 
force, the transforming power, so far as the form of life 
we denominate by the term human is concerned, this and 
this alone. 

True, then, and most welcome is the great fact of facts 
that the world is beginning to become so conscious of to- 
day, that " The mind is everything ; what you think, 
you become." Mortal mind? says one. Yes and no. 
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as mortal mind 
— there is only Divine Mind. When in our own thought, 
and by reason of our limited comprehension, we shut our- 
selves off and look upon ourselves as individual physical 
beings, we give birth to a temporary mode of thought 
that might well be termed mortal mind, or, rather, the 
product of mortal mind. But it is at first natural, and 
it is only by using this " mortal mind" that it is able to 
be transformed, and hence renewed into the Divine 
Mind. So by wisely using that which we have, the 
natural, we are transformed from that which is most 
apparent, and consequently that which we think we are, 
the mortal, the physical, into that which from all eternity 
we in reality are, and never except in our own minds can 
get away from, — the Spiritual, the Divine. 

It is through this instrumentality that the Divine Life 
within us, the Divine Life with all its ever-ready-to-break- 
forth glories and powers, is enabled to be changed from a 
mere passive and hence potential actuality, and to burst 
forth into the full splendors of conscious, active life. 
Surely, then, thought rightly directed and rightly used 
has within it the true regenerating and hence redeeming 
power ; through it and it alone are we able to make for 
ourselves a new heaven and a new earth, or, rather, by 
thus finding the kingdom of God, and through it entering 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 13- 

into the conscious realization of the heavenly state, aie 
we able to make for ourselves a new earth by actualizing 
the kingdom of Heaven in our lives while living on the 
earth, and which, when once truly realized, can never be 
lost. 

/ The majority of people are not awake ; it is only here 
/and there that we find one even partially awake. Prac- 
tically all of us, as a result, are living lives that are un- 
worthy almost the name of lives, compared to those we 
might be living, and that lie within our easy grasp. 
While it is true that each life is in and of Divine Being, 
hence always one with it, in order that this great fact 
bear fruit in individual lives, each one must, as we have 
already said, be conscious of it, he must know it in 
thought, and then live continually in this consciousness. 
-- An eagle has been chained for many months to the 
perch just outside of his cage ; so long has he been con- 
scious of the fact that he is bound by the little silver 
chain which holds him that he has given up all efforts 
to escape, almost forgetting, perhaps, that the power of 
flight is longer his. One day a link of the little chain 
opens, but, living so long in the consciousness that he 
is held in captivity, he makes no effort to escape. The 
freedom of the heavens is now his, were he only conscious 
of his power. But day after day he sits sullenly longing 
for freedom, but remaining a captive still. One morn- 
ing, however, he ventures a little farther out on his perch 
than usual, when suddenly a strange consciousness is his 
— he sets his wings, and the captivity which has held 
him for months will perchance know him no more for- 
ever. 

And so it is with man. On account of the false gods 
that tradition and prevailing theology have brought him 



14 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

he knows not himself, and not knowing himself he 
knows neither his powers nor his possibilities. The 
human soul is held captive. An opaque physical struct- 
ure is about all that he can be said truly to give evi- 
dence of. The day comes, however, when in his thought 
he moves out a little farther than is usual, then a little 
farther and a little farther. The Inner Light is now 
moving within, he catches at first a little glimpse of his 
real Essential Being, then a little more and a little more, 
and by and by the fact of his essential oneness with the 
Infinite Life and Power bursts in upon, illumines, and 
takes possession of his soul. In bewilderment, and 
almost afraid to utter it at first, he cries aloud, " God, 
I am one with Thee ! " Enraptured by this new con- 
sciousness, he holds to the thought of this oneness, and 
living continually in this thought his life forever after 
flows steadily on in one constant realization of his one- 
ness with Divine Being. And so " the first man, [which] 
is of the earth earthy," is changed into "the second 
man, [which] is the Lord from Heaven," and thereafter 
the Christ sits enthroned. 

Compared with the new life that he is now continually 
living, the old life of ignorance with its consequent 
limitations, which can now know him no more forever, 
deserved only the name of death, for, strictly speaking, 
he was indeed dead unto life, and only he who lives in 
the conscious realization of his oneness with the One 
and Only Life can be said truly to be born into Life. He 
is born into the world and lives in the world, but into 
consciously real and eternal Life he has not yet entered. 
He is born the Adam man, but within him the Christ 
man has not awakened, or, rather, he has not yet awak. 
ened to the Christ within, and so the Christ man is not 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 15 

yet born, and sitting therefore in darkness he knows not 
yet the glorious realities of life. 

" I am thine own Spirit " are the words that the In- 
finite Father by means of the Inner Voice is continually 
speaking to every human soul. He who will hear can 
hear, and through it step out into fulness of life. 

We hear much in the prevailing crude and irrational 
theology in regard to the " fall of man ; " but it is only as 
man has departed from the Inner Light, and gone after 
false man-made gods, that anything that might rationally 
be termed a " fall " has come about. Separating our lives 
in thought from their oneness with Divine Life is what 
constitutes, and what alone will ever constitute, the fall of 
man. But the teaching that has come to us through 
?past generations, which has as its dominant keynote 
*poor worm and miserable sinner, death and the grave, 
lis as false as it is pernicious and therefore damnable in 
its influences. These old thoughts and words have had 
the influence of taking heaven out of earth and populat- 
ing the earth with doubt, and error, and sin, and crime. 
New and true thoughts and words will make literally a 
new heaven and a new earth. 

Man is essentially Divine, part and parcel of the In- 
finite God, and so, essentially good. When he severs 
his connection in consciousness with the Divine, then and 
then only do doubt, and error, and sin, and crime, with 
their consequent pain, suffering, disease, and despair, enter 
into his life. Only a pure and radical infidel — by this we 
mean one who is in reality such, for there are many who 
are called infidels, even by many avowed religionists, who 
live a far truer religion than they themselves live — can 
rationally hold to the doctrine of original sin, with its 



16 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

consequent poor worm and miserable sinner. The relig- 
ious teacher who professes to believe in God as the One 
Divine and Supreme Being, and at the same time holds 
to this irrational doctrine, is many times more a disciple 
of the Devil, whom he recognizes and whose power he 
evidently respects, than he is of the Infinite God in 
whom he professes to believe. He and he alone it is 
who finds a place for what he and his theology term the 
Devil. The one who truly believes in God as the only 
true and real being and the source of all life and power 
can indeed find no place for the Devil. He sees and 
recognizes the evil that comes from lives that lose for 
a time their conscious connection with the Supreme 
Source of their being, but he can find no place for 
any other essential and abiding Reality. 

And as this separation from God is made entirely 
through the instrumentality of the mind, he sees that 
making one's conscious connection again with God — 
the true and only true redemption — must also be made 
through the instrumentality of the mind. Believing in 
the God in whom he believes, aye, knowing the God 
whom he knows, he sees no place for an atonement 
in the sense of appeasing the wrath of an angry God. 
Knowing the God whom he knows, he shares not in 
those barbaric, not to say idiotic, notions. He does 
see, however, that redemption can and must come 
through living in the conscious at-one-ment with the 
Father's life. He recognizes it as the natural method 
that the Adam man be first born with freedom of 
thought and consequently freedom of action, and that 
from him the Christ man then comes forth into conscious- 
ness. He recognizes that it is God's, and consequently 
nature's and evolution's, method that "the first man is 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 17 

of the earth earthy, the second man is the Lord from 
heaven." He recognizes the fact that kittens are born 
blind, not because their parents or even their grand-par- 
ents sinned, but because it is simply natural for them to 
be born blind, and that in process of time their eyes will 
open. He also recognizes that, on account of our limited 
comprehension, the " natural " appears first and then the 
" spiritual," but in reality the spiritual is from the very 
first incarnated within, and only because it is can it in 
process of time, either sooner or later, assume the ascen- 
dency by changing from potential into active life. 

Once in a while there comes into the world one who 
from the very first recognizes no separation of his life 
from the Father's life, and who dwells continually in this 
living realization ; and by bringing anew to the world 
this great fact, and showing forth the works that will 
always and inevitably follow this realization, he becomes 
in a sense a world's savior, as did Jesus, who, through 
the completeness of his realization of the Father's life 
incarnate in him, became the Christ Jesus. He in this 
way pointed out to the world how all men can enter into 
the realization of the Christ-life and thus be saved from 
all impulse to sin. And so instead of coming to appease 
the vengeance of an angry God — difficult for one who 
has any adequate conception of God even to conceive of 
— he brought to the world, by exemplifying in his own 
life as well as by teaching to all who will hear his real 
message, the method whereby all of us can enter into the 
full and complete realization of our oneness with the life 
of the tender and loving Infinite Father. 

Eedeemed from the bondage of the senses through 
which alone sin comes, and born into the heavenly state, 
into life eternal, is every one who comes into the same 



18 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

relations with the Father, and hence into the same reali- 
zation of his oneness with the Father's life, that Jesus 
came into. It is difficult, however, to see how any one 
will be redeemed from the bondage of sin and enter 
into the heavenly state simply by believing that Jesus 
entered into it while here. No amount of believing^ 
that he lived the life he lived will take any one into 
the heavenly state, but living the life that Jesus lived 
will take every one who lives it there, in any age and 
in any clime, even whether or not he knows that such 
a man as Jesus ever lived. 

The world has less need for a perverted and hence 
perverting doctrine of " vicarious atonement " that bodies 
of men have formulated by either intentionally or igno- 
rantly dragging the teachings, as also the life, of the 
Master down to a purely material interpretation — less 
need, I repeat, has the world for this diabolical doctrine 
than it has for the great vitalizing fact of a conscious, 
living at-one-ment with the Father's life, as every one 
whose spiritual sense is at all unfolded will inevitably 
get from the life and teachings of the Master, if indeed 
he is more interested in the real living truth that he 
taught than he is in the almost numberless man-made 
theological theories and dogmas regarding it. 



In order that we may ever keep our standing ground 
clearly in mind, let us now gather into a single view 
the substance of what we have endeavored thus far to 
present. 

From everlasting to everlasting is Being, self-existent, 
without beginning and without end. Depending upon 
nothing outside of itself and the essential essence, the 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 19 

very life of all that through it comes into ex-istence, 
it is therefore Infinite Being. Existing at first as pure 
spirit, it is therefore Divine Being. Literally the I Am, 
the Divine Jehovah, the Infinite God. Then, animated 
by love and acting through its own volition, it projects 
itself into ex-istence and assumes the various forms we 
see in the universe about us, including we ourselves. 
But by the act of projecting itself into ex-istence, the 
Infinite Divine Being does not change in the least its 
essential inner nature, as indeed it would be impossible 
for it to do. What, then, in reality is there in ex-istence ? 
Only Divine Being, the Infinite God in all his manifold 
manifestations ; and thus it remains through all eternity, 
as must necessarily be from its very nature, and other- 
wise it could not be. God, then, is the Infinite Being, 
the Infinite Spirit which is the essential essence, the life 
of all, which therefore fills all the universe with Him- 
self alone, so that all is He, since He is all. 

But when Divine Being incarnates itself in flesh and 
forms for its use a physical body — a human body, as we 
call it — it necessarily has to manifest through the in- 
strumentality of physical senses, and, though Divine 
Being is infinite, the vision of man is limited, and for a 
time his true inner Life (always Divine Being) is con- 
cealed from him, for he naturally interprets everything 
from the standpoint of the physical. First that which is 
natural, and man knows himself only as a natural 
physical being, differing not essentially from the mate- 
rial universe about him. As he looks out, however, he 
sees that he differs from other forms in existence, in that 
he has a mind through which thought is engendered, a 
mind that grows by using. Then contemplating himself 
and longing for the truth of his existence, gradually 



20 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

there dawns upon his consciousness the fact that his life 

is Divine Being, that other than this it has never been — 

except in his own mind when in his thought he mistook 

the mere physical - form in existence as the real essential 

life itself, thus separating his life from the Infinite 

Divine Life. He thus realizes that in God he lives, 

moves, and has his being, that God is the life of his 

life, his very life itself ; and thus he comes in time into 

{ the conscious, living realization of his oneness with the 

\ Infinite Life and Power. And so we find it true — first 

j the natural man, then the spiritual. 

Through thought, and through thought alone, the 
second man, the Lord from Heaven, is gradually evolved 
out of the first man, which is of the earth earthy. 
Through a perfectly natural process of evolution, out of 
the first man Adam — sense perception — is evolved 
the Christ man — Divine self-realization. Impossible, 
however, is it for anything to be evolved that was not 
first involved; and so man finds that the Lord Christ 
has always been within and he has known it not. 

It is the same to-day as it was many years ago with 
Jacob when he said, " Surely the Lord is in this place ; 
and I knew it not." This and all that followed he found 
simply by using the stones of the place where he was ; 
for with the stones of the place he made for himself a 
pillow, and it was while sleeping on this pillow that he 
beheld the ladder set upon the earth and reaching to the 
heavens, upon which the angels were ascending and 
descending, and thus it was that he entered into com- 
munion with the life of the heavens. Later, then, he 
transformed the pillow into a pillar that served as a 
guide to other men. 

And so with every human soul — we must use simply 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 21 

the stones of the place where we are. The only stones 
with which human life can build is thought. It and it 
alone is the moulding, the creative power — earnest, sin- 
cere thought of the place where we are, this constitutes 
the stones of the place where we are and with which we 
can make a pillow upon which for the time being to rest. 
r^Through this and this alone will the life of the heavens 
^be opened to us; for angels ascending — aspiration — 
will in time bring to us angels descending — inspiration. 
Then with Jacob of old we will cry out, " Behold, the 
Lord is in this place ; and I knew it not." Then our 
pillow, the thought that gives us the knowledge that the 
Infinite Divine Life is always within, the Essential 
Essence of the human soul itself, we can convert into a 
pillar, a pillar that will be a guide to lead other men 
into this same realization and lifeH 

And^ so the entire problem of human life is wonder- 
fully simple and easy if we are but true to the highest 
within us, and keep ourselves free from the various per- 
plexing and mystifying theological theories and dogmas, 
which ordinarily give merely a promise of spiritual 
awakening, realization, and power in some other form 
of life, rather than actualizing it here and now in this 
life. 

But only as man becomes conscious of the Lord Christ 
within, only as he becomes conscious, — realizes in 
thought that he is one with the Infinite Life and Power, 
— does this great fact become a moving and mighty force 
in the affairs of his daily life. Until this is true he 
remains in the condition of the eagle, which, though 
unchained, thinking nevertheless that he was still 
chained, remained in captivity when the freedom of the 
heavens awaited simply the spreading of his wings. 



22 THE QBE ATE ST THING EVER KKOWJSt. 

Although the answer to our title has been given both 
in lines and between lines long before this, it may be an 
aid to us, especially in making practical what is to fol- 
low, to put it as best we can into a definite form C The 
greatest thing ever known — indeed, the greatest thing 
that ever can be known — is that in our real essential 
nature we are one with the Infinite Life and Power, and 
that by coming into, and dwelling continually in, the 
conscious living realization of this great fact, we enable 
to be manifested unto and actualized within us the 
qualities and powers of the Divine Life, and this in the 
exact degree of the completeness of this realization on 
our part, j 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 2^ 



II. 



DIVINE ENERGIES IN EVERY-DAY LIFE. 

And what, let us ask, is the result and hence the value 
of this realization ? For unless it is of value in the 
affairs of every-day life, it is then a mere dead theory, 
and consequently of no real value. Use must be the 
final test of everything, and if it has no actual use, or if 
no visible results follow its use, we had better not spend 
time with it, for it is then not founded upon truth. 

First, let it be said, it is not the mere intellectual rec- 
ognition, merely the dead theory, but the conscious vital 
and living realization of this great truth, that makes it of 
value, and that makes it show forth in the affairs of every- 
day life. This it is, and this alone, that gives true bless- 
edness, for this is none other than the finding of the 
kingdom of God, and when this is once found and lived 
in, all other things literally and necessarily follow. 
Through this the qualities and powers of the Divine Life 
are more and more realized and actualized, and through 
their leading we are led into the possession of all other 
things. 

rjHe who comes into this full and living realization of 
his oneness with the Divine Life is brought at once into 
right relations with himself, with his fellow-men, and 
with the laws of the universe about him. He lives now 
in the inner, the real life, and whatever is in the interior 
must necessarily take form in the exterior, for all life is 



24 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

from within out. There is no true life in regard to 
which this law does not hold. And if the will of God is 
done in the inward life, then is it necessarily done in all 
things of the outward life, and the results are always 
manifest. Thus and thus alone it is that men have become 
prophets, seers, and saviors ; they have become what the 
world calls the " elect " of God, because in their own 
lives they first elected God and lived their lives in His 
life. And thus it is that to-day men can become prophets, 
seers, and saviors, for the laws of the Divine Life and the 
relations of what we term the human life to it are identi- 
cally the same to-day as they have been in all time past 
and will be in all time to come. The Divine Being 
changes not; it is man alone who changes. 

It is solely by virtue of man's leaving the inner life of 
the spirit and thus departing from God, or by virtue of 
his not yet finding this real life, that sin and error, pain 
and disease, fears and forebodings, have crept as naturally 
and as necessarily as that effect follows cause into his 
life ; only by closing his eyes to the inner light, by shut- 
ting his ears to the inner voice, that, although he has eyes 
to see, yet he sees not, and, although he has ears to hear, 
yet he hears not. And it is only by uniting his life 
with the Divine Life, and thus living again the life of 
the spirit, that these things will go, even as they have 
come. 

All the evil, unhappiness, misery, and want in the 
world are attributable to man, and are the direct results 
of his taking his life, either consciously or unconsciously, 
either directly or indirectly, out of harmony with the 
Power that works for righteousness and consequently for 
wholeness and perfection. \ And when our life is lived in 
the life of God, and God's will therefore becomes our 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 25 

will, all is and necessarily must be well with us, for con- 
trary to His will it is impossible that anything should 
ever come to pass. And thus it is that he who seeks 
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness shall 
have all other things added unto him. The soul, the 
real life, is Divine, and by allowing it to become translu- 
cent to Infinite Spirit by living continually in this con- 
scious union with Divine Being it reveals all things to 
us. Things become hidden, mysteries fill and uncertain- 
ties pervade life only as we turn away from the inner 
light and life ; there is nothing that is hidden of itself ; 
to God all things are known, and he who consciously 
lives his life in the life of God sees with the Divine 
vision that reveals all things to him. He who lives 
continually under this Divine guidance enters thereby 
into the realm of the highest wisdom, and even in the 
most trivial things of every-day life he never finds him- 
self in a state of doubt or perplexity, for he always 
knows what to do and how to do it. 

He has no regrets for the past, because before he 
entered into his present consciousness he was in a sense 
dead unto life, and all regrets that he might have for 
the past are now swallowed up in the joys that the new 
birth that has brought him into fulness of life continu- 
ally spreads before his every step. He has neither fears 
nor forebodings in regard to the future, for he knows that 
contrary to God's will, which is now his will, nothing can 
ever come to pass. Peace, therefore, a full and abiding 
peace, is continually his. 

As all life is from within out, and as this is absolutely 
true in regard to the physical body, the fountain of 
Divine Life that has been opened up within him, which 
of itself can admit of no disease or imperfection of any 



26 THE GBEATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

kind, will allow only healthy conditions to be external- 
ized in his body ; and where unhealthy conditions have 
been built into it before his entrance into the new life, 
the life that now courses through it will in time drive 
them out by entirely replacing the diseased structure 
with that which is pure and whole. 

A continually growing sense of power is his, for he is 
now working in conjunction with the Infinite God, and 
with God all things are possible. In material things he 
is not lacking, for all things are from this one Infinite 
Source, and, guided by the Divine Wisdom and sustained 
by the Divine Power that are now his, in a perfectly 
natural and normal way he finds that an abundance of 
all things is his, always in hand in sufficient time to 
supply all his material needs, and never is there lack 
when the time comes, if he simply does each day what 
his hands find to do. Sure always of this unfailing 
source of supply, he does not give himself to the accu- 
mulation and the hoarding of great material posses- 
sions, thereby robbing and enslaving the real life. 

His thoughts grow more and more into the nature of 
their Divine Source, and as thoughts are forces, and as in 
the degree that they are spiritualized do they become 
ever more effective in their operations, so through their 
instrumentality is he able to mould more and more effec- 
tively the every-day conditions of life. And so as he 
enters into this new life he finds that all things of the 
outer life fall into line ; for as is the inner, so always and 
necessarily is the outer. 

These truths will come as new revelations to many, 
and again to many they will come merely as agents to 
strengthen and possibly to arouse to renewed life the 



THE GEE ATE ST THING EVER KNOWN. 27 

realizations of which they are already more or less con- 
scious. In themselves, however, they are not new, but 
as old as the world. They are the real spirit of true 
Christianity, not, however, of the Christianity that the 
majority of people conventionally hold, and which in 
many respects is as radically inconsistent as it is void of 
results, but the great transcendent truths of our relations 
with the Father's life that Jesus taught. 

They are likewise the real essential spirit of all the 
great religions of the world, and as all religions in their 
purity are from the same source, — God speaking through 
the minds of those who have come into a sufficient union 
with Him to hear and to interpret His voice, the one 
universal source of all true inspiration and all true 
revelation, — so far as their fundamental principles are 
concerned they are necessarily the same. 

And the great spiritual awakening, the beginnings of 
which we are witnessing in all parts of the world to-day, 
is evidence that the Divine Breath is stirring m the 
minds and hearts of men and women in a manner such 
as it has rarely if ever stirred before. Men and women 
are literally finding God. They are breaking through the 
mere letter and form of an old and too-long-held ecclesi- 
astical theorizing and dogmatism into the real vital spirit 
of the religion of the living and transcendent God. They 
are waking here and there and everywhere to the realiza- 
tion of their oneness with the living God. Their lives 
are being completely filled with this realization, and as a 
consequence they are showing forth the works of God. 

They are leaving the old one-day-in-seven, some-other- 
world religion, and they are finding the joys as well as 
the practicability of an every-day, this-world religion. 
They are passing out of the religion of death and possible 



28 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

glory hereafter into the religion of life and joy and 
glory here and now, to-day and every day, as well as here- 
after and forevermore. With this new religion of the 
living God and the spiritual power that through it is 
being made active in their lives, they are moulding in 
detail all of the affairs of every-day life, proving thereby 
that their religion is the religion of life. And any 
system of religion that does not enable its possessor to 
do this is simply not religion, and we should no longer 
desecrate the word by applying it to any such hollow 
mockeries. 

To this old semblance of religion those who are thus 
entering into this new and larger religion of life will never 
return, nor can they, any more than the chick can enter 
within the confines of its shell again after it has been once 
born into life. Having found the pearl, the shell for 
them must perish ; or rather, as it is of no farther value to 
them, it perishes simply by the operation of natural law. 
Centred thus in the Infinite, working now in conscious 
harmony with Divine forces, they ever after rule the 
world from within. 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 29 



III. 



THE MASTER'S GREAT BUT LOST GIFT. 

The conclusions we have arrived at thus far we have 
arrived at independently of any authority outside of our 
own reason and insight. It is always of interest as well 
as of greater or less value to compare our own conclu- 
sions with those of others whose opinions we value. It 
would indeed be a matter of exceeding great interest to 
compare those we have reached with those of a number 
whose opinions come with greater or less authority to all 
the world. Space does not permit this, however, and I 
propose that we give the balance of our time to the con- 
sideration, though necessarily brief consideration, of two 
such ; one universally regarded as one of the most highly 
illumined teachers, if not the most highly illumined, the 
world has ever known, the Christ Jesus; the other 
universally regarded as one of the most highly illumined 
philosophers the world has ever known, the philosopher 
Fichte. And in these two we have the advantage of the 
life and teachings of one who lived and taught nearly 
nineteen hundred years ago, and one who lived and 
taught a trifle less than a hundred years ago. By select- 
ing these, let it also be said, we have the advantage of 
two whose lives fully manifested the truth of that which 
they taught. 

In considering the life and teachings of Jesus, let us 
consider them not as dull expositors interpret and repre- 



30 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

sent them, but as he himself gave them to the world. 
Certainly Jesus was Divine ; but he was Divine, as he 
himself clearly taught, in just the same sense that you 
and I and every human soul is Divine. He differed 
from us, however, in that he had come into a far clearer 
and fuller realization of his divinity than we have come 
into, as indeed his life so clearly indicates. Jesus was 
God manifest in the flesh, as indeed every one must be 
who comes into the full realization of his oneness with 
God, as Jesus himself again so clearly taught. 

In the thoroughly absurd, illogical, and positively 
demoralizing doctrine of "vicarious atonement," as given 
us by early ecclesiastical bodies by perverting the real 
teachings of Jesus even to the extent of calling interpol- 
ations in the New Testament to their aid, I certainly can- 
not believe. I do, however, believe that it has done more 
harm to the real teachings of Jesus, has been more pro- 
ductive of scepticism and infidelity, than all other causes 
combined. It is a doctrine that can be formulated only 
by those who have no spiritual insight themselves, and 
who therefore drag the teachings of the Master down to 
a purely material interpretation because of their inability 
to give them the spiritual interpretation that he intended 
they should have. 

If his mission was not that of vicarious atonement, not 
for the purpose of appeasing the wrath and indignation 
of an angry God and thus reconciling Him to His children, 
what then was it ? Clearly his mission was that of a 
Eedeemer as he gave himself out to be — a Eedeemer to 
bring the children of men back to their Father. And 
how did he purpose to do this ? Clearly by having them 
consciously unite their lives with the Father's life, even 
as he had united his. The kingdom of God and His 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 81 

righteousness is not only what he came to teach, but what 
he clearly and unmistakably taught. 

That he plainly and unequivocally taught his disciples 
that this was his mission is evidenced by numerous sen- 
tences such as the following, occurring all through the 
gospels : Matt, iv., 23, " Jesus went about in all Gali- 
lee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the 
gospel of the kingdom," etc. . . . Luke viii., 1, 
" He went about through cities and villages, preaching 
and bringing the good tidings of the kingdom of God." 
. . . Luke iv., 43, " But he said unto them : I must 
preach the good tidings of the kingdom of God to other 
cities also, /or therefore ivas I sent" . . . Luke ix., 
2, " And he sent them forth to preach the kingdom of 
God and to heal the sick." . . . Matt, xxiv., 14, 
" And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in 
the whole world, for a testimony unto all nations," etc. 
. . . In more than thirty places in the first three 
gospels do we find Jesus thoroughly explaining to his 
disciples his especial mission — to preach the glad 
tidings of the coming of the kingdom of God ; and even 
before he entered upon his public work, we hear John 
the Baptist going before him and saying, " Kepent ye ; 
for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." 

What did Jesus mean by the kingdom of God, or, as 
he sometimes expressed it, the kingdom of Heaven ? As 
an answer, and an answer better than any speculations 
in regard to it, let us again take his own words: 
" Neither shall they say, Lo here ! or, Lo there ! for, 
behold, the kingdom of God is within you." He taught 
only what he himself had found, the conscious union with 
the Father's life as the one and all-inclusive thing. 
With Jesus from the very first, only in union with God 



32 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

was there reality. And this life in the Father's life 
seemed nothing at all marvellous to him; it was per- 
fectly natural, and the only life he knew. Hence he 
could not say otherwise than that he and the Father 
were one. His vision was so clear and his already 
realized Divine life was so full and complete, that he 
knew that it was utterly impossible for his life to be with- 
out the Father's life, as we indeed shall know when our 
vision becomes clear and we enter into the same fully 
realized union with it. 

This great knowledge came to Jesus not through intel- 
lectual speculation and still less through any communi- 
cation from without ; it came to him through his own 
interior consciousness ; to all appearances he was born 
with it. He was born with a peculiar aptitude for dis- 
cerning things of the Spirit, the same as among us some 
are born with a peculiar aptitude for one thing and 
others for other things. But so great was this power 
naturally in Jesus that in it we may justly say he had a 
great advantage over most people born into the world, 
and for this reason was he all the more able and all the 
greater reason was there for him to be one of the great 
world Teachers and hence Eedeemers. He was indeed 
Immanuel — God with us. 

Jesus, I repeat, never speaks of his life in any other 
connection than as one with the Father's life. 

In reply to a question from Thomas in the fourteenth 
chapter of John, he says, " If ye had known me, ye 
would have* known my Father also : from henceforth ye 
know him and have seen him." Philip, who was stand- 
ing near, unable to comprehend the interior meaning of 
the Master's words, said unto him : " Lord, show as the 
Father, and it sufficeth us." Jesus, somewhat surprised 



THE GEE ATE ST THING EVER KNOWN. 33 

that he had not made himself clear to them, replied : 
" Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not 
know me, Philip ? He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father ; how sayest thou, Show us the Father ? Believ- 
est thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
me ? The words I speak unto you I speak not from my- 
self : but the Father abiding in me doeth His work. 
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me : 
or believe me for the very works' sake." 

But if his especial mission was to preach the good tid- 
ings of the kingdom of God, why, I hear it asked, did 
he claim that only through him can we come unto the 
kingdom, as he indeed says in his conversation with Philip 
and Thomas immediately preceding the part just quoted : 
" I am the way, the truth, and the life ; no one cometh unto 
the Father but by me." Simply because it was the liv- 
ing truth that he brought, which was and evermore is to 
redeem men by uniting them in mind and heart with the 
Father. His realized oneness with the Father's life was 
the way, the truth, and the life, and only by going over 
the same path that he himself had trod can anyone be 
truly united with the Father. He found this great vital 
and redeeming truth nowhere else in the world ; he had 
to speak as one standing alone, and in this sense he spoke 
most truly and most literally when he said, " No one 
cometh unto the Father but by me." And in order to 
point out his life, his realized oneness with the Father's 
life, as the way, the truth, and the life, he spoke and in- 
deed had to speak as he did, even at the risk of being mis- 
understood and having his words taken in a purely 
material sense, as was the tendency of the spiritual 
poverty of the age, and indeed as his very disciples so 
often interpreted his words, as we have but recently seen. 



34 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

In order to give forth the spiritual teachings which he 
gave, he had to use the language and the illustrations 
that their material minds could grasp, and in this way 
make his teachings doubly liable to a purely material in- 
terpretation. 

" I am the bread of life," said he to those assembled 
about him ; " your fathers did eat the manna in the wilder- 
ness, and they died. This is the bread which cometh 
down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not 
die. I am the living bread which came down out of 
heaven : if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for- 
ever : yea, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, 
for the life of the world." The Jews taking his words 
in a material sense argued one with another and said : 
" How can this man give us his flesh to eat ? " Jesus 
simply reaffirmed his statement, saying : " Verily, verily, 
I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man 
and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. 
. . . For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is 
drink indeed." Literally, "My flesh is the true food, 
and my blood is the true drink. He that eateth my 
flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him. 
As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the 
Father, so he that eateth me, he also shall live because 
of me." 

And many of his disciples, even, when they heard him 
speaking in this way, said among themselves, " This is a 
hard saying ; who can hear him ? " — who can understand 
him ? Jesus, quickly perceiving that they were again 
dragging his words down to a material interpretation, 
asked them if what he had just said caused them to 
stumble, and then, in order that they get his real meaning, 
he said, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 35 

profiteth nothing : the words that I have spoken unto 
you are spirit and are life." And so all except those 
who are wholly spiritually, not to say even mentally, 
blind can readily see that what Jesus meant to say, and 
what he actually did say, was, the words that he spoke 
to them of his oneness with the Father's life were the 
true meat and the true drink, of which, unless a man 
ate and drank, he had not life in himself, but that these 
were able to give him life and life eternal. 

" He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood 
abideth in me, and I in him." Or, reversing the expres- 
sion, He that dwelleth in me and I in him, he it is that 
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood. " The words 
that I have spoken unto you, (they) are spirit and (they) 
are life." " As the living Father hath sent me, and I 
live because of the Father, so he that eateth me, he also 
shall live because of me." In the words of another, 1 " To 
eat his flesh and drink his blood means to become 
wholly and entirely he himself ; to become altogether 
changed into his person without reserve or limitation ; 
to be a faithful repetition of him in another personality ; 
to be transubstantiated with him, i.e., as he is the Eternal 
Word made flesh and blood, to become his flesh and 
blood, and what follows from that, and indeed is the 
same thing, to become the very Eternal Word made flesh 
and blood itself ; to think wholly and entirely like him, 
and so as if he himself thought and not we ; to live 
wholly and entirely like him, and so as if he himself 
lived in our life. As surely as you do not now attempt 
to drag down my own words, and reduce them to the 
narrow meaning that Jesus is only to be imitated, as an 
unattainable pattern, partially and at a distance, as far 

1 Fichte in " The Way towards the Blessed Life.' 



36 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

as human weakness will allow, but accept them in the 
sense in which I have spoken them, that we must be 
transformed into Christ himself, so surely will it become 
evident to you that Jesus could not well have expressed 
himself otherwise, and that he actually did express him- 
self excellently well. Jesus was very far from represent- 
ing himself as that unattainable ideal into which he was 
first transformed by the spiritual poverty of the after- 
ages; nor did his apostles so regard him." 

To live in Christ is to live the life he lived, by living 
in the truth in which he lived and which he taught. 
The one great truth in which he continually lived was, 
as we have seen, that only in conscious union with God 
is there any real life, and therefore we can readily see 
why he continually gave out, as the Gospel writers tell 
us so many times he did, that his especial mission was 
to preach the glad tidings of the kingdom of God. Were 
it not possible for us to live the same life that he lived, 
he certainly would not have taught what he taught. 
This wonderful life of fully realized Divine life Jesus 
claims not for himself alone, but for all who actually live 
in the truth that he taught. 

It was not to establish any material institution, as the 
church, that Jesus made his mission, but that the king- 
dom of God and His righteousness should become actual- 
ized and hold sway in the minds and hearts of men — 
this was his mission, an entirely different thing from the 
founding of a material organization. Paul and his party, 
sharing the then prevailing ideas that a material king- 
dom was to be established, were the originators of the 
church, not Jesus. We find the word "church" men- 
tioned in the four Gospels by Jesus only once or twice, 
and then only in an incidental way, while we find the 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 37 

kingdom mentioned over thirty times in the first three 
Gospels alone. 

As we have already pointed out, had it been his pur- 
pose to establish a material organization, then he cer- 
tainly would not have given it out that something else 
was his especial purpose. But when the material organ- 
ization, the church, purely a man-made institution, was 
established, the early church fathers bringing even inter- 
polations of the Holy Word to their aid in establishing it 
and some of its various observations, — as modern scholar- 
ship has already so clearly discovered, and as it is con- 
tinually discovering, — the following ages, thinking that 
they had an institution to keep up, gradually lost, to a 
greater or less extent, the real spiritual teachings of the 
Master in their zeal to keep up the form of an institution 
with which he had nothing to do. And those long and 
bitter persecutions of the church in the early and middle 
ages, as well as the long list of crimes sanctioned and 
committed directly by the church of the middle ages, 
show that they had not the real truth ; for those who live 
in the truth and have it uppermost in their minds and 
hearts never persecute — only those who are on either 
uncertain or false ground, and whose endeavor it is to 
keep up the form of an institution which they feel would 
otherwise fall to the ground. 

No, true religion has never been known either to per- 
secute or to show intolerance of any kind. Throughout 
the whole history of the churches' heresies and persecu- 
tions, the persecuted party has ever occupied a corre- 
spondingly higher and the persecuting party a lower 
position, the persecuting party continually fighting as it 
were for life. But the real truth which Jesus taught 
will not cause nor will it even permit persecutions — 



38 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

hence we find the latter only where there is the lack of 
the former. 

And again, the real truth which Jesus taught will not 
admit of divisions, much less of intolerance, for all real 
truth is exact truth, and in regard to it there can be no 
differences, and our modern theologians and our churches 
of to-day, which get their form and life from the specu- 
lations and theories of the former, certainly have not the 
real truth that Jesus taught, for they are divided in 
various directions on practically every dogma that they 
seek to promulgate. And strange as it may seem, heresy 
trials, with all their absurd attendant features, are not 
entirely unknown even yet, to-day. But in Jesus' own 
words, " A house divided against itself cannot stand." 
And so if the church of to-day wants to stand as a real 
power in the world, or if indeed it wants to stand at all, 
it must either get back to, or it must come up, as the case 
may be, to the real living truth that Jesus lived and 
taught. Unless it does this it will inevitably lose its hold 
on the people even more rapidly than it is losing it to-day. 
And certainly the younger ones whom it does not yet hold 
will not be drawn to it, when they can turn to that which 
has a thousand-fold more of truth and hence of life-giv- 
ing power than it has to offer. 

That this is not a mere sentiment on our part is evi- 
denced by the wonderful rapidity with which the " New 
Thought " movement — would that we could designate 
what we mean without using any term — which has its 
underlying truth, this conscious union with the Divine 
Life and the actualized powers attendant upon it as Jesus 
taught, — hence not a new discovery, but a recovery, — is 
growing in America, in England, to be brief, in practi- 
cally every civilized country in the world. Thousands 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 39 

every year in our own and in other countries are finding 
in it the joys of the realized Divine Life, and are turning 
to it from that which but poorly feeds them ; and that 
this also is no mere sentiment on our part is evidenced 
by the contents of a letter recently sent by a noted 
divine in high official standing in the church in England 
to a noted American preacher, in which he said, in sub- 
stance, that the church in England is literally honey- 
combed by the " New Thought " movement, and asked 
that he be sent a list of the best books that had already 
appeared in America along the lines indicated. 

And so what we need to-day is the same as what the 
world is eagerly calling for, the life-giving power of the 
great central truth that the Master taught, and not the 
various theories and speculations in regard to his ori- 
gin, his birth, his life, and the meaning of his teachings. 
And still less, the fabrications of the early fathers in 
regard to inherited sin, original sin, vicarious atone- 
ment, and their believe-and-be-saved doctrine, and the 
alternative doctrine, fail to believe that which is op- 
posed to all reason, all common sense, all real mercy, as 
well as all true justice, and be damned, be forever and 
eternally lost. 

Jesus is indeed a lamb of God that taketh away the 
sins of the world, but he takes them away by bringing 
to the world the truth that shall make men free. Hence 
it is through his life and the truth that he lived and 
taught, not through his death and the observance of the 
various ceremonies and forms that have grown up around 
it. Those who are aided by symbols — and I am aware 
of the fact that for some many hallowed associations are 
connected with them — may do well to make use of 



40 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

them until they outgrow the need for them. But sym- 
bols are of value only where the real thing is not, and 
those who have the real thing no longer have need for 
symbols. " But the hour cometh," said Jesus, " and 
now is " (since I have brought you the real spirit of 
truth), " when the true worshippers shall worship the 
Father in spirit and truth; for such doth the Father 
seek to be His worshippers. God is a Spirit, and they 
that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." 

Jesus, according to his own words, did not propose to 
rest satisfied with the mere historical belief that he was 
the Eternal Word made flesh, and much less, as some 
phases of theology teach, that reconciliation with the 
Father, as ordinarily understood, was his purpose. God 
would adopt no methods in connection with His children 
that are opposed to their own reason. Nor would He 
adopt any partial, limited, or tribal methods. 

And if, as various theologians would have us believe, 
that reconciliation with the Father can come about only 
by a belief in the shedding of the material, physical 
blood of Jesus, that through it the Father may receive 
satisfaction for His favor, how, then, in regard to the 
great company of those who cannot accept a theory so 
absurd, so illogical, and so opposed to the nature of the 
living God whom they know, and whom they no longer 
have to speculate and theorize in regard to, to say noth- 
ing of the millions upon millions of those who never 
have heard, and other millions who never can hear, of 
the man Jesus and the story of his blood " shed for the 
sins of the world," nine-tenths of whom, for good 
reasons, would not believe it if they did hear it ? No, 
these fabrications cannot be true, for " in every nation, 
he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is ac- 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 41 

cepted of Him." And so one may be without connection 
with any church, and even without connection with any 
established religion, and yet be in spirit, hence in reality? 
a much truer Christian than hosts of those who profess 
to be his most ardent followers, as indeed Jesus himself 
so many times says. " By their fruits ye shall know 
them/' said he. " Not every one that saith unto me, 
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but 
he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." 
That which calls itself Chiistianity must prove itself, 
and only that that shows forth in its life the works, the 
power, the influence — the truth that Jesus' life showed 
forth — is the real. " He that believeth on me," said 
Jesus, — and shows it by living my life, — u the works 
that I do shall he do also; and greater works than 
these shall he do because I go unto the Father." And 
he who would know by what authority Jesus spoke, let 
him live the life that he lived and he will then know of 
the doctrine. Thus and thus only can it be known. We 
may speculate and theorize in regard to it, but only by 
living the life can we know it. 



42 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 



IV. 



THE PHILOSOPHER'S RIPEST LIFE THOUGHT. 

Let us now see how the truths we have already set 
forth stand in reference to the thought of the philoso- 
pher Fichte. f Truth, the highest truth, and truth for its 
own sake, was the one supreme object of hSfe life. And 
in order to discern this clearly himself, that he in turn 
might point it out clearly to others, he stood erect and 
alone, free from connection with any institution, organi- 
zation, or system of thought that would distort or limit 
his vision and induce him either intentionally or unin- 
tentionally to interpret truth by bending it to suit the 
tenets of the system of thought or the institution to 
which he might be, even though inadvertently, bound, j 

It was of Fichte that an eminent English scholar once 
said : " Far above the dark vortex of theological strife in 
which punier intellects chafe and vex themselves in vain, 
Fichte struggles forward in the sunshine of pure thought 
which sectarianism cannot see, because its weakened 
vision is already filled with a borrowed and imperfect 
light." 

It is, moreover, always of value to know how the truth 
that one finds and endeavors to give to others finds em- 
bodiment in his own life, for this is the sure and unfail- 
ing test of its vitality, if not indeed of its reality. A 
word or two, therefore, in reference to the life of Fichte 
may not be inappropriate here, a word or two from the 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 43 

same eminent English scholar quoted above, the translator 
of his works from the German to the English, for he knew 
well his life the same as he knew also his philosophy, 
" We prize his philosophy deeply/' says he ; " it is to us 
an invaluable possession, for it seems the noblest exposi- 
tion to which we have yet listened of human nature and 
divine truth; but with reverent thankfulness we ac- 
knowledge a still higher debt, for he has left behind him 
the best gift which man can bequeath to man — a brave, 
heroic human life." 

" In the strong reality of his life, — in his intense love 
for all things beautiful and true, — in his incorruptible 
integrity and heroic devotion to the right, we see a liv- 
ing manifestation of his principles. His life is the 
true counterpart of his philosophy — it is that of a 
strong, free, incorruptible man/' 

And now to a few paragraphs of Fichte's thought 
bearing more or less directly upon the theme immediately 
in hand. After setting forth in a very comprehensive 
manner the truth in regard to Being, which he identifies 
with Life much in the same general manner as we have 
already endeavored to set it forth, and then after mak- 
ing it clear that by God he means this Infinite Being, 
this Spirit of Infinite Life, he says : 

" God alone is, and nothing besides him, — a princi- 
ple which, it seems to me, may be easily comprehended, 
and which is the indispensable condition of all religious 
insight." 

" But beyond this mere empty and imaginary concep- 
tion, and as we have carefully set forth this matter above, 
God enters into us in his actual, true, and immediate life, 



44 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

— or, to express it more strictly, we ourselves are this his 
immediate Life. But we are not conscious of this immedi- 
ate Divine Life ; and since, as we have also already seen, 
our own Ex-istence — that which properly belongs to us 
— is that only which we can embrace in consciousness, so 
our Being in God, notwithstanding that at bottom it is in- 
deed ours, remains nevertheless forever foreign to us, and 
thus, in deed and truth, to ourselves is not our Being ; we 
are in no respect the better of this insight, and remain as 
far removed as ever from God. We know nothing of this 
immediate Divine Life, I said ; for even at the first touch of 
consciousness it is changed into a dead World. . . . 
The form forever veils the substance from us ; our vision 
itself conceals its object ; our eye stands in its own light. 
I say unto thee who thus complainest : < Baise thyself to 
the standing-point of Beligion, and all these veils are 
drawn aside ; the World, with its dead principle, disap- 
pears from before thee, and the Godhead once more re- 
sumes its place within thee, in its first and original form, 
as Life, — as thine own Life, which thou oughtest to live 
and shalt live.' " 

In setting forth how universally Divine Being incar- 
nates itself in human Life, he says : " From the first 
standing-point the Eternal Word becomes flesh, assumes 
a personal, sensible, and human existence, without ob- 
struction or reserve, in all times, and in every individual 
man who has a living insight into his unity with God, and 
who actually and in truth gives up his personal life to 
the Divine Life within him, — precisely in the same way 
as it became incarnate in Jesus Christ." 

Speaking, then, of the great fundamental fact of the 
truth that Jesus himself perceived and gave to the world, 
and also of the manner whereby he came into the per- 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 45 

ception of it, he says : " Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly 
possessed the highest perception containing the founda- 
tion of all other Truth, of the absolute identity of Hu- 
manity with the Godhead, as regards what is essentially 
real in the former." 

" His self-consciousness was at once the pure and abso- 
lute Truth of Eeason itself, self-existent and independ- 
ent, the simple fact of consciousness." 

Then in showing that Jesus as he is presented to us 
by the apostle John never conceived of his life in any 
other light than as one with the Father's Life, he says : 

" But it is precisely the most prominent and striking 
trait in the character of the Johannean Jesus, ever 
recurring in the same shape, that he will know nothing 
of such a separation of his personality from his Father, 
and that he earnestly rebukes others who attempt to 
make such a distinction; while he constantly assumes 
that he who sees him sees the Father, that he who hears 
him hears the Father, and that he and the Father are 
wholly one; and he unconditionally denies and rejects 
the notion of an independent being in himself, such an 
unbecoming elevation of himself having been made an 
objection against him by misunderstanding. To him 
Jesus was not God, for to him there was no independent 
Jesus whatever; but God was Jesus, and manifested 
himself as Jesus." 

To show, then, that this is a universal truth, brought 
in its fulness, and with a living exemplified vitality, first 
to the world by Jesus, but by no means applicable to 
him alone, he says : " An insight into the absolute unity 
of the Human Existence with the Divine is certainly the 
profoundest Knowledge that man can attain. Before 



46 THE GEE ATE ST THING EVER KNOWN. 

Jesus this Knowledge had nowhere existed; and since 
his time, we may say, even down to the present day, it 
has been again as good as rooted out and lost, at least in 
profane literature." 

That we must come into the same living realization of 
this great transcendent truth that Jesus came into, either 
through his teaching and exemplified realization of it, 
or through whatever channel it may come, he clearly 
indicates by the following: "The living possession of 
the theory we have now set forth — not the dry, dead, 
and merely historical knowledge of it — is, according 
to our doctrine, the highest, and indeed the only possi- 
ble, Blessedness." 

" The Metaphysical only, and not the Historical, can 
give us Blessedness ; the latter can only give us under- 
standing. If any man be truly united with God, and 
dwell in him, it is altogether an indifferent thing how he 
may have reached this state; and it would be a most 
useless and perverse employment, instead of living in 
the thing, to be continually repeating over our recol- 
lections of the way. Could Jesus return into the world, 
we might expect him to be thoroughly satisfied, if he 
found Christianity actually reigning in the minds of 
men, whether his merit in the work were recognized or 
overlooked; and this is, in fact, the very least that 
might be expected from a man who, while he lived on 
earth, sought not his own glory, but the glory of him 
who sent him." 

And what in the eyes of Fichte are the results that fol- 
low and hence the tests of the genuineness of this higher 
realization, this True Keligion, as he sometimes terms it ? 
His words in this connection are : " True Religion, notwith- 
standing that it raises the view of those who are inspired 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 47 

by it to its own region, nevertheless retains their Life 
firmly in the domain of action, and of right moral 
action. The true and real Eeligious Life is not alone 
percipient and contemplative, does not merely brood over 
devout thoughts, but is essentially active. It consists, as 
we have seen, in the intimate consciousness that God 
actually lives, moves, and perfects his work in us. If 
therefore there is in us no real Life, if no activity and 
no visible work proceed forth from us, then is God not 
active in us. Our consciousness of union with God is 
then deceptive and vain, and the empty shadow of a 
condition that is not ours ; perhaps the general, but life- 
less, insight that such a condition is possible, and in 
others may be actual, but that we ourselves have, never- 
theless, not the least portion in it." 

" Religion does not consist in mere devout dreams, I 
said : Religion is not a business by and for itself, which 
a man may practise apart from his other occupations, 
perhaps on certain fixed days and hours ; but it is the 
inmost spirit that penetrates, inspires, and pervades all 
our Thought and Action, which in other respects pursue 
their appointed course without change or interruption. 
Thatjhe Divine Life and Energy actually lives in us is 
inseparable from Religion, I said." 

To show, then, how completely at one in his or her con- 
sciousness this truly religious man or woman becomes, 
how his or her own personal will is lost in, and so trans- 
muted into, the Divine Will, as also the calmness and 
tranquillity with which his or her life forever thereafter 
flows along, he says : " The expression of the constant 
mind of the truly Moral and Religious man is this 
prayer : i Lord ! let but thy will be done, then is mine 
also done ; for I have no other will than this — that 
thy will be done." 



48 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

" This Divine Life now continually develops itself 
within him, without hindrance or obstruction, as it can 
and must develop itself only in him and his individu- 
ality ; this alone it is that he properly wills ; his will is 
therefore always accomplished, and it is absolutely 
; impossible that anything contrary to it should ever 
come to pass." 

" Whatever comes to pass around him, nothing appears 
to him strange or unaccountable — he knows assuredly, 
whether he understand it or not, that it is in God's 
World, and that there nothing can be that does not 
directly tend to Good. In him there is no fear for the 
Future, for the absolute fountain of all Blessedness 
eternally bears him on towards it ; no sorrow for the 
Past, for in so far as he was not in God he was nothing, 
and this is now at an end, and since he has dwelt in 
God he has been born into Light ; while in so far as he 
was in God, that which he has done is assuredly right 
and good. He has never aught to deny himself, nor 
aught to long for ; for he is at all times in eternal pos- 
session of the fulness of all that he is capable of enjoy- 
ing. For him all labor and effort have vanished ; his 
whole Outward Existence flows forth, softly and gently, 
from his Inward Being, and issues out into Reality with- 
out difficulty or hindrance." 

Speaking, then, of how we may at once enter into and 
live in the full realization of this real life, and also of 
those who, instead of entering immediately into the 
Kingdom and thus finding the highest happiness and 
joy here and now, are expecting to find it in its com- 
pleteness after the transition we call death, he says : 
" Full surely indeed there lies a Blessedness beyond the 
grave for those who have already entered upon it here, 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 49 

and in no other form or way than that by which they 
can already enter upon it here in this moment ; but by 
mere burial man cannot arrive at Blessedness — and in 
the future life, and throughout the whole infinite range 
of all future life, they would seek for happiness as vainly 
as they have already sought it here, if they were to seek 
it in aught else than in that which already surrounds 
them so closely here below that throughout Eternity it 
can never be brought nearer to them — in the Infinite. 
And thus does the poor child of Eternity, cast forth from 
his native home, and surrounded on all sides by his 
heavenly inheritance which yet his trembling hand fears 
to grasp, wander with fugitive and uncertain step 
throughout the waste, everywhere laboring to establish 
for himself a dwelling place, but happily ever reminded, 
by the speedy downfall of each of his successive habita- 
tions, that he can find peace nowhere but in his Father's 
house." 

Finally, speaking of how completely doubt and un- 
certainty are eliminated from the life of him who through 
the realization of the truth we have set forth becomes 
thereby centred in the Infinite, he says : " The Religious 
man is forever secured from the possibility of doubt and 
uncertainty. In every moment he knows distinctly what 
he wills, and ought to will ; for the innermost root of his 
life — his will — forever flows forth from the Divinity, 
immediately and without the possibility of error ; its 
indication is infallible, and for that indication he has an 
infallible perception. In every moment he knows that 
in all Eternity he shall know what he shall will, and 
ought to will ; that in all Eternity the fountain of Divine 
Love which has burst forth in him shall never be dried 
up, but shall uphold him securely and bear him on 
forever." 



50 THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

Such, then, in general, are fragments of the thought, 
and, let it be added, the ripest thought, of one who has 
exerted perhaps as great a direct influence upon the life 
of his own immediate as well as succeeding ages as any 
man who has ever lived, (jit is to Fichte that, to a very 
great extent, the German Empire owes the splendid edu- 
cational system it has to-day. His thought began to 
exert its influence at the time when its educational system 
was falling into a state of chaos, and even the Empire 
itself by virtue of its recent losses was in a more or less 
uncertain condition. And, acting to a greater or less 
extent through the minds of Froebel and Pestalozzi, his 
thought has aided in giving to the world the truest type 
of education it has yet seen, that that we know under the 
name kindergarten, which is slowly but surely working 
to revolutionize our present educational methods, which 
stand so sadly in need of a change even so radical. 

If the truth and vitality of a man's thought are to 
be judged by its permanent as well as its immediate 
influence, surely the thought of Fichte found its life in 
the realms of the highest truth, through which alone 
real vitality comes, for it has exerted and is still exert- 
ing a most powerful life-giving influence, an influence, 
indeed, that will never end. I 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 51 



V. 



SUSTAINED IN PEACE AND SAFETY FOREVER. 

At what now have we arrived, and what has been the 
process ? From our own reason and insight, inde- 
pendently of all outside authority, we have found the 
great truth that a living insight into the fact of the 
essential unity of the human life with the Divine Life 
is the profoundest knowledge that man can attain to. 
This as a mere intellectual perception, however, as a 
mere dead theory, amounts to but little, if indeed to any- 
thing at all, so far as bearing fruit in every-day life is 
concerned. It is the vital, living realization of this great 
transcendent truth in the life of each one that makes it 
a mighty moving and moulding force in his life. 

Then we have also found that this same great truth 
was the great central fact of both the life and the teach- 
ings of one who comes as authority to practically all the 
world, the Christ Jesus. That this was the one great 
truth in which he continually lived, that it was the secret 
of his unusual insight and power, and that it was also 
the great truth that he came to bring to the world, he 
distinctly tells us. That it was not only what he pro- 
claimed he came to teach, but also what he distinctly 
taught, we have likewise found. 

We have found also that the ripest life thought of the 
philosopher Fichte — he whose spiritual vision was so 
fully unfolded as to enable him to give to the world 



52 THE GEE AT EST THING EVER KNOWN. 

such a remarkable blending of the intellectual and the 
spiritual in his philosophy — was almost if not identi- 
cally the same in reference to this great truth, as was 
also his thought in regard to the life and the power as 
well as the mission of Jesus. 



And when I see day after day the wonderful results 
that follow in the lives of those who have entered into 
this living realization, then I know that Jesus knew 
whereof he spoke when he gave the injunction, " Seek 
ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and 
all these things shall be added unto you." Moreover, I 
do not believe, but I know, that whoever through this 
realization thus finds the kingdom of God will find his 
words — that all else will follow — literally and absolutely 
as well as necessarily true. All will follow in a per- 
fectly natural and normal manner, in full accordance 
with natural spiritual law. 

i He who goes thus directly to the mountain top will 
| find all things spread out before him in the valley below. 
^He who thus becomes centred in the Infinite will find 
that to the same centre whence his inner life issues, all 
things pertaining to his outer material life will in turn be 
drawn. The beauty of holiness is one with the beauty of 
wholeness. To know but the One Life is to live in the 
ifact and the beauty of wholeness ; and where wholeness 
Us, there no lack of anything will be found. 

If what we ordinarily term our Christian churches, 
and if the preachers who stand in their pulpits, would 
fully and universally give themselves to the real message 
that Jesus gave to the world, then we would find that 
" the common people " would go to and would hear them 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 53 

gladly ; there would then be no hard pressing social 
situation to face, for the people would then have a living 
knowledge of the one great truth through which all other 
things would come. 

This great transcendent truth, however, that was the 
very essence of the life and the teachings of Jesus, has 
been even in our churches as good as rooted out and lost. 
And shall we conclude that because it is practically lost 
the greater part of the time and attention of the preacher 
in the large majority of them is given to the empty, 
barren, inconsequential themes it is given to ? Or is it 
because so much time and attention is given to the latter 
that there is no time left for the former ? However this 
may be, it certainly is true that to a greater or less ex- 
tent to-day we find identically the same conditions that 
Jesus found, and that he continually tried so hard to do 
away with. "Full well," said he, "ye reject the com- 
mandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition." 

Many a student comes from our theological schools so 
steeped in theological speculations and in denominational 
dogmas that he hasn't the slightest conception of what 
the real mission of Jesus was. What wonder, then, that 
the church to which he goes soon becomes a dead shell 
from which the life has gone, into which those in love 
with life will no longer enter, a church whose chief con- 
cern very soon is, how to raise the minister's salary ? 
But once let these minor and inconsequential, not to say 
at times petty, foolish, and absurd, things be dropped, 
and let all time and attention be given to the great cen- 
tral truth that Jesus brought to the world, and we shall 
find that during the next one hundred years, aye, during 
the next fifty years, what will then be real Christianity 
will make more progress than what is now termed Chris- 



54 THE GBEATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 

tianity has made during all the nineteen hundred years 
it has been in the world. The fact that during all these 
hundreds of years it has not accomplished more than it 
has is quite good evidence that something- essential is 
lacking in it. 

The real soul-cry even of all Christendom to-day is the 
same as tlje injunction given by the native ministers of 
Japan to a noted representative of the Christian religion 
as he was leaving there not long ago : " Send us no more 
doctrines: we are tired of them. Send us Christ." 
And the only way that Christ can be sent is by sending 
the great central truth that he brought to the world, a 
truth so world-wide, so universal, that, so far even as the 
so-called various great religions are concerned, in regard 
to it there can be no differences, for from its very 
nature it is at the very foundation, indeed the very life 
essence, of them all. And so it is true in this sense 
that there is essentially but one religion, the religion of 
the living God. For to live in the conscious realization 
of the fact that God lives in us is indeed the life of our 
life, and that in ourselves we have no independent life, 
and hence no power, is the one great fact of all true 
religion, even as it is the one great fact of human life. 
Eeligion, therefore, at its purest, and life at its truest, 
are essentially and necessarily one and the same. 

It is only through this living realization of the essen- 
tial unity of our life with the Father's life that true 
blessedness, and even true peace and happiness, can be 
found. The sooner, then, that we come into it, and thus 
live the life of the spirit, the better, for neither will they 
come nor can they be found in any other way. There is, 
moreover, no time either in this form of life, or in any 
other form, that we can any more readily come into it, 



THE GREATEST THING EVER KNOWN. 55 

and thereby into all that follows, than we can at this very 
moment. And when this fountain of Divine Life is once 
fully opened within us, it can never again be dried up, 
and we can rest assured that it will at all times uphold 
us in peace and bear us on in safety. And however 
strange or unaccountable at times occurrences may ap- 
pear, we can rest in a triumphant security, knowing that 
only good can come, for in God's life there is only good, 
and in God's life we are now living, and there we shall 
live forever. 1 

1 For suggestions as to the method of entering into this higher realization, as 
also for a much fuller portrayal of its results in every-day life, the reader is 
directed to the volume by the same author entitled, " In Tune with the Infinite, 
or, Fulness of Peace, Power, and Plenty." 



c^ 



LBFe'10 



